Break The Lock If It Don't Fit
by Maple Fay
Summary: Post-2x03. Sherlock cannot stay calm and still for the life of him. Irene is not amused. Kind of PWP, but not really. Just channeling OTP feels. Title from Florence and the Machine's "Kiss With A Fist".


_**Break the lock if it don't fit**_

It's November, and the rain is pounding against the windows with the same ferocity Sherlock feels rumbling and raging inside his bones.

Trouble is, _he_ cannot well start kicking at the walls or throwing things at the ceiling.

Oh but he _wants_ to.

He's been here for a better part of a year now, stowed safely away in a basement apartment on the outskirts of London, lying low—or at least pretending to.

It wasn't so bad at first. He caught up on sleep, dizzy from the drugs he'd taken. He recovered from his injuries. He read all the press coverage on a battered tablet. He played Angry Birds until he got bored of it (that is, after approximately sixteen minutes). He researched. A lot.

And then he got up off the couch and went straight into the kitchen, opening cupboards and setting supplies down on the counter, determined to explore the fine art of cooking.

Irene, surprisingly staying in the apartment at that time, laughed at him for hours, making him feel rather indignant. Until he tasted his own cooking, that is.

He stuck with push-ups after that fiasco, occasionally grumbling about the absence of a stationary bike or a treadmill.

This only earned him another round of laughter and snickering.

That was three months ago. This is now.

He's sitting in an armchair, or at least he's trying to, seemingly unable to coax his body into a marginally comfortable position. Irene gives him a long, hard look over the edge of a book she's reading, spread out comfortably on a battered sofa on the other side of a wobbly coffee table. Everything in here is either old or shabby, either wobbly or shaky, or hard, or plain _wrong_.

He hates this place. He hates being here, and his body agrees with him wholeheartedly.

As if on cue, his leg twitches, and Sherlock scratches at his thigh, tapping his foot impatiently on the floor. Irene grunts under her breath, making him stop, albeit reluctantly—she's only just come back from another 'job', or whatever one should call those outings of hers, and after spending several months locked in the same space as her, Sherlock knows better than to irritate her until she's somewhat unwound.

Too bad he's never been one for acting reasonably.

Another twitch. Another scratch. Another tap.

"If you do that one more time," Irene says slowly, not bothering to look up from the book she is reading, "I'm going to tie you down.'

Sherlock throws his arms out with a huff, gritting his teeth impatiently. "I need something to do. Not here. _Outside_."

"You know that's not possible."

She's most infuriating when she's like that: calm and reasonable.

Unfortunately, she's also _right_. "How do you cope with this?" he blurts out, pulling at his own hair until he hisses and cringes. "How do you just… _stay put_?"

Irene shrugs and turns a page. "I invent things for myself to do. I think about what I could do." She closes the book and meets his eyes with a straight-on, daring gaze. "I get myself tired enough to _stop_ thinking about what I _can't_ do."

Sherlock huffs and pulls his legs up on the seat of his armchair, like a spoilt five-year-old he (sometimes) is. "I wish it were so simple with me."

She laughs at him, out loud: a low, raspy sound that reaches deep into his chest. "Oh, I bet it _is_."

He rolls his eyes in exasperation. They've been down this road before, Irene sniggering and smirking and winding him up with suggestions, and him pretending not to understand a single word she says. It used to work pretty well as a distraction from his fairly miserable thoughts.

Only today, it doesn't.

If anything, it only frustrates him further. Nudges at his proverbial side, rattles around in his stomach. "Perhaps you're not an expert on all this after all," he challenges her, and taps his foot some more for better measure.

He knows it's childish, and ridiculous, and plain _stupid_, but it's also something to do. Plus, if he gets to make her break character and react a little more strongly to his taunting, it will only make his day that much better.

He's not disappointed as she presses her lips into a thin line, and closes her book. "Stop that."

"Do you really think yourself so skilled at giving orders?" He smirks and taps his foot again. Just one more time, he tells himself. He blinks.

And then his eyes open and she's suddenly _on him_, one knee resting on the seat of his armchair, pressing into the joint of his left hip and thigh while one of her hands fists itself into the material of his shirt, the other grabbing a handful of his hair and yanking his head backwards until all he can see is the questionable whiteness of the ceiling. "Do you really think yourself that skilled at disobeying me?"

Her voice is deep, low, almost pleasant—but there's an underlying quality to it, something that makes him freeze and cease to move, to think, to _exist_. A small part of him wishes to reach out, brush his fingertips against the underside of her wrist, check her pulse. A much bigger part is quite sure it would be perfectly even, strong and steady.

It's absolutely exhilarating. "You haven't exactly _trained me_, have you?" he points out, trying to appear as smug and smooth as possible. He hears her laughter as much as he feels it against the tensed muscles and sinews of his throat. Irene bites down at his pulse point, and Sherlock's hands flex reflexively, fingers clawing at the armrests.

"I could always start now," Irene muses, as if to herself. "Perhaps I _should_, given the cheek you've been exhibiting recently."

He's determined not to yield to her, at least not without a fight. He's quite sure he would be able to overpower her easily if he tried—all those push-ups have done wonders to his upper body strength—but there's no reason to if she can't get him where she wants him (completely in her mercy), is there?

He expects some more barely masked brutality—another bite, or shove, or pull—and braces himself for the pain to come, closing his eyes defiantly.

Without letting go of his hair or relieving the pressure off his crotch, Irene leans forward and captures his upper lip in the most gentle caress, her teeth nipping at the tender flesh.

Sherlock's eyes snap open just as his hands fly up, grasping at Irene's hips in a desperate attempt to get her closer. She grins at him smugly and arches her body away from his, still clutching a handful of his hair. "Patience," she chastises him, almost playfully, but with a hard, cool note in her voice that makes him lower his arms: how's _that_ for _not_ yielding, again?

"I think you secretly enjoy this," she speaks into his ear, her mouth brushing his earlobe as she pronounces random letters. He longs to have her touch him some more, kiss him again—to feel that rush of adrenaline, substituting the thrill of search and detection—but her sharp, strong hold on his hair keeps him well in place. "I think you like it when all you can do is sit here, and be completely dependent on my whims. Which is why I'm going to do _this_."

She lets go of his hair and stands up straight, face impassive. Sherlock leans forward, hands flat on the armrests. "You're letting me get away with it? Is that a dominatrix thing?"

Irene shakes her head slowly, a smile curving her lips just so. "I am not your toy, Sherlock. If you think you may go on playing games with me, you have never been more wrong. I'm not a pastime. You're welcome to watch some cricket on the telly if you're bored." She cocks her head to the side, her eyes cold despite of the smile still lingering. "Because that's what it's all about, isn't it? You being bored."

He could simply nod, or shrug, or tell her that yes, that's it and isn't she a clever girl? He could, and he probably _should_, for the sake of his own sanity: but he's too un-centred, too agitated for his own liking, caught too far away from the shore as it is. "No," he says instead, his eyes locked with hers in a duel till the first blood.

"No?" Irene's eyebrows rise, and Sherlock wonders how her skin tastes, right there, in the crease of her eyelid. "What _is_ it, then? Care to enlighten me?"

He stands up, moving with deliberate slowness as he approaches her, fingers reaching out to trace that tantalizing line of flesh. Irene blinks slowly, once, twice—Sherlock's hand slides lower, to the apple of her cheek, following the sharp outline of the bone. She has nice bones, he decides. "I don't know yet," he confesses. "It's you, isn't it? A mystery. Always. The woman; the woman who… what? What have you done to me, Miss Adler? Or, for that matter, I to you?"

She doesn't answer, not with words: her hands rise and cup his face, thumbs pressed lightly under his jaw. "What do you think?"

Sherlock closes his eyes, too dazed to try and shake his head. "I don't know," he repeats lamely, his skin tingling where she touches it. He wonders if his touch affects her in any similar way. "I can't think. It's infuriating."

"And necessary," she quips, tightening her hold on his neck just so. "You tend to over-think the easiest problems."

"You're nowhere close to _easy_, Miss Adler."

She smirks at him, leaning in a touch. "Say it again."

"Miss Adler." His free hand touches her hip, fingers spread across the soft fabric of her clothing, palm warming up from the half-imagined heat of her skin.

"_Again._" Her voice slashes across him like a whip, leaving him burning.

"Irene."

Her skin is everything he'd imagined, and more. Taut and hot, it stretches across those amazingly beautiful bones, building the mystery that she is. He bends his head to taste that little patch next to her eye, flicks his tongue over her eyelashes. She breathes into his shoulder, her teeth marking his collarbone. Sherlock hisses loudly, digging his fingers into one perfectly curved hip. "Not your playground," he murmurs, mapping the outline of a breast, mouth latched to the hollow of her throat. Her laughter reverberates against his tongue, creeps inside his mouth and down his throat, to the depths of his body.

"Says who?"

He doesn't answer, focusing on following her scent down to places where it's most concentrated, most powerful: the inside of her elbow, under her knee, at the joint of her leg and hip. Under her breasts. Deep in the curious hollow of her navel. It's like deciphering a treasure map, or perhaps writing it anew. But Irene is an explorer, too, and he shouldn't have forgotten it.

She flips them over with ease, hands closing around his wrists as she slowly, leisurely coaxes him to stretch his arms behind his head, and wraps his fingers around the metal rod of the headboard. "I'm not going to restrain you if you promise to be a good boy," she speaks against his breastbone and he nods dumbly, watching her slide lower, and lower still.

He should be ashamed of the shouting, and of the way his muscles and veins stand out under his skin as he flexes his arms, wanting nothing more than let go and bury his hands in her hair, pull her closer, make her wrap that wicked tongue around more of him. (But he doesn't, in fear that she'd stop if he did.) Irene hums and swallows, and Sherlock shouts again, her name or a curse or perhaps both at once. This seems to amuse her, for she's smiling at him with genuine joy in her eyes as she straddles him and takes him all in, head thrown back until the ends of her hair brush his thighs. "A screamer, Mr. Holmes?"

He grits his teeth and lets go of the rods, holding her in place with hands smelling of metal as he thrusts up, higher and higher, until it's her turn to scream. And oh, isn't _that_ a beautiful sound. He takes it as a cue and sits up, pulling her against him and kissing her, for the first time, as they both struggle to maintain composure—unsuccessfully.

"Why won't you let go?" he pants into her mouth, fascinated with the way their combined tastes blossoms on his tongue. She chuckles, or moans: she probably doesn't know herself.

"Why won't _you_?" she throws the question right at him, her muscles clenching in a way that should be banned from the surface of the Earth. His fingers curl into her hips just as her nails dig into his shoulders.

"Together," he says, and angles his pelvis, reaching a place he hasn't discovered yet.

"Yes," she agrees, yanking at his hair again. The burn in his scalp is enough for him, as the hiss of pain falling from his lips is for her.

"I see what you meant. About making yourself too tired to think."

"Did it work?"

"Partially. There are still a few problems I'd like to work out."

"Such as?" she props herself up on an elbow, and he knows she can tell for herself but still needs to hear him utter the words.

In all truth, he's tired of talking.

"Why don't I show you, Miss Adler."

_**End**_


End file.
